


To Be Both Feared and Loved

by PTomlin



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-26
Updated: 2013-08-26
Packaged: 2017-12-24 18:00:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/942968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PTomlin/pseuds/PTomlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short fic inspired by not-quite-jackson's <a href="http://not-quite-jackson.tumblr.com/post/56005309506/done-with-this-one-yay">dark!Jack art</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	To Be Both Feared and Loved

**Author's Note:**

> Title may or may not come from Machiavelli's _The Prince_

He’s listened to the noise of the battle from the bars of his cell, pressed close to the dark metal and _hoping_ for all that he is worth.

On the chance that it might lend some strength, might tip the balance in favor of the ones fighting for him.

But when the sounds of conflict cease, when the weighted edge to the darkness lifts suddenly in a rush like a covering removed, he scurries quickly back into the darkness, shrouding himself in the shadows at the corners of his prison. They are coming, the Guardians, his friends, his family,coming to find him, to rescue him at last, set him _free--_

He wants to warn them, first, before they see.

“Jack!”

_Bunny._

He doesn’t answer. They’re close, already close. Bunny knows where to find him, after all, following easily that thread of hope that he has willed into being, wrapped himself up in, sent out in purpose.

Even growing faint as it is.

He can feel the fear surging to replace that hope, he can _feel_ it, crawling through him like a thing alive, seeking out his hope to tear it down, diminish it to nothing, to take its place inside him. And it tells him how close he’d come, how close Pitch had been to succeeding.

“Jack?”

He stays still in the black, too afraid to move, too anxious to peer past the shelter of his hood that he has mercifully kept over the long months of his stay. He can hear them though, just outside the bars. Bunny’s cautious call, Tooth’s wings, North’s heavy footfalls. And that gentle glow that must be Sandy, growing brighter, getting closer--

“NO!” he cries, jerking his body closer to the wall, hands pulled up to obscure his face, and the glow retracts in haste.

He hasn’t seen himself in weeks, but he can feel the changes that the darkness has wrought, etched into his flesh, corrupting his visage, reshaping him piece by piece into--

Something else.

“Frostbite. Mate, look at me, please,” Bunny says, and he wants to obey, but he has to prepare them.

“Did--did Pitch tell you,” he asks, voice rough not from disuse but from the many times he’s destroyed it, screaming into the black. “Did Pitch tell you what he was doing? What he wanted, with me?” And he can feel their fear too, the falter in Bunny’s core, the nervous shifting of uncertainties and the quiet beginnings of unwanted understandings shoving themselves to the forefront.

“Pitch wanted a Fearling Prince,” North says.

“It’s what he always wants,” adds Tooth. “But it’s not like he’s ever managed it, Jack, what’s wrong?”

“He was laughing,” Bunny says, and his fear is the strongest now, his voice is tight with it. “Pitch was laughing, before he turned tail. Said we were too late--Jack, what did he mean?”

Jack doesn’t know about too late. He doesn’t know what that point feels like, so he’d like to think he hasn’t reached it. You should know, when you’re lost, you should _know_ , it’s only fair. He still feels like _him_ , he isn’t gone yet, isn’t lost, can’t be and shouldn’t that count for something?

He moves, and the shadows cling to him, begging for his voice, his thoughts, a whisper or whim of command, but he ignores them, leaves them cold and static in the corners and crevices where they rightfully belong. If he doesn’t use these powers Pitch has given him, he can pretend they aren’t his, can believe that what has been done to him can be undone.

The doing involved a lot of screaming on his part.

He lets the light hit the good side of his face first, the side that still looks like Jack Frost, Avatar of Joy, Guardian of Childhood, Herald of Winter. He brushes his hood back a fraction so that he can look at them, his family, from the corner of his good ( _still blue, still untouched_ ) eye. Sandy is working on the lock, and the rest of them watch him, anxious, wary, nervous, breathing shallow, fear-stained breaths, and he hates that he loves their agony, can taste it heavy on the back of his tongue, can feel it like a buzz in the front of his mind.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I tried, but I couldn’t--he was too--I was _so scared_.”

“Jack, we’ll fix it, whatever it is, we can fix it,” Tooth promised him.

He believes her. He has to, and riding on the waves of that belief, he turns, flips his hood back completely, faces the light and the Guardians and lets them see.

He doesn’t look at them though, can’t bear to, and instead focuses on the black lines of the bars that separate him from them.

He can only imagine what he looks like. He knows his hair has darkened to an inky blackness on one side, has spent hours, days, tearing at dark strands that spread from a tiny patch to nearly half his crown. The teeth on that side are sharper, predatory, and he’d worry about catching his cheek on their lethal points, but he can feel where his face has split along the jawline. He’s traced the new contours of his flesh with fingertips and tongue over endless sleepless nights, willing the soft edges to meld back into something resembling humanity, please, please, not even Pitch looks this monstrous--

But it doesn’t matter, has never mattered, no matter how many wishes he made, and he stopped trying to fix himself when he noticed the shadows that began trailing his hands like cobwebs. They pour from the ruins of his face and he thinks that it should hurt. _Something_ about this should hurt, but it never does.

His right eye _glows_ golden.

“It’s bad, isn’t it,” he says into the silence.

“We can fix it,” Bunny says hoarsely. “We’ll--we’ll find a way.”

He nods numbly and ignores the scent of their collective dread ripening on the air.

When he meets Bunny’s eyes, the Pooka flinches, and he fights to keep the sorrow out of his quickly downturned gaze.

Sandy conquers the lock and he spends a snowglobe-assisted sleigh ride huddled into his hood, careful not to look at anyone.

They lead him to a room at the Pole and hold dozens of impromptu whispered exchanges behind closed doors. He knows, because their desperation seeks him out, a heady blend that sends him reeling.

They don’t tell him he can’t leave, but it seems to be implied by the closed doors and the way they never leave him alone. He can’t help but think that he’s traded one cage for another, but he doesn’t like that thought, doesn’t know where it’s come from, so he tamps it down and tunes it out.

No one will give him a mirror.

They ask him what Pitch did to him, but they want specifics, details that he can’t give them, because he doesn’t remember the how, not really. Just endless days and nights of terror, his mind breaking and breaking again, each time healing a little more wrong, the press of shadows from within gradually growing stronger than the weight of Pitch’s domain.

Eventually Sandy coaxes him to sleep, with smiles and dreamsand and the bed North has prepared for his use. It is the first sleep he has had in months that goes un-plagued by nightmares, and the dreams he receives instead are filled with light and hope, joy and wonder, the memories of everything they are and everything they have accomplished over their decades together spinning within him, a shining beacon as he sleeps, and he is aware enough of the dreaming that in that twilight plane he at last dares to believe, to really believe, that he’s going to be alright.

 

He wakes, to a sad-eyed dreamweaver and a hand full of brand-new black-tipped claws curled deep into the fabric of his borrowed bed, and despairs.


End file.
